COLUMN ONE : Dancing Away From Trouble : Some youths have left gangs in favor of clubs devoted to <i> banda </i> music. Their parties can spark problems, police say, but the craze is viewed as an alternative to violence.

Four beefy guys with ponytails and tattoos strut through the crowd at a South-Central Los Angeles party.

They confront three other guys wearing baseball caps airbrushed with words such as machos and maldito. Without speaking, each side flashes signs--indicating who they are and where they’re from. Speaking with their hands, they twist their fingers and rapidly open and close their fists--often a signal that a gang fight is imminent.

But these youths are throwing club signs, symbolizing their allegiance to the quebradita dance clubs for which they have abandoned their gangs.

The clubs, whose members are united by a passion for dancing to Mexican banda music, have helped steer youths from gangs and have the potential for keeping more off the streets, say police, school officials and former gang members.

“What I’ve seen is something unreal,” said Jose Vargas, a Santa Ana police officer. “I went to one of the parties and I was amazed to see about 300 kids between the ages of 8 and 30, all dressed up in the cowboy clothes and dancing. By God, if we could get all the kids in Santa Ana in clubs, dancing like this, we could stop all the shootings on the street.”

An estimated 30,000 Latinos are fueling the quebradita club craze, which has swept Southern California and is quickly gaining popularity across the country and in Mexico, according to KLAX-FM (97.9), a radio station that registers the clubs.

Since the first group was organized in Huntington Park in 1990, more than 800 have formed--attracting both former and present gang members.

With names such as Sheriff de Chocolate , Super Bandido and Los Tres Mosqueteros , the clubs operate like dance fraternities. Every weekend, members of different clubs meet one another at a network of parties held at homes, halls and warehouses across Los Angeles and Orange counties. Most party-goers are 10 to 25 years old.

No one knows how many youths have left gangs for quebradita clubs, and no one sees the clubs as a cure-all for the gang problem. But officials say many youths have either given up gangbanging or are less active because of their club involvement.

“I see a lot of gang members I deal with now wearing the cowboy boots,” said Manuel Velasquez, a San Fernando Valley crisis intervention worker for Community Youth and Gang Services. “When they see me, they get embarrassed and say, ‘Don’t say anything to anyone.’ I say to them, ‘No, that’s cool.’ We encourage kids to join the clubs because it provides them with another alternative to gangs.”

Sergio Castellanos, an 18-year-old former Pacoima gang president, saw his older brother shot to death during a gang fight. Now he spends weekends dressed in cowboy boots and black button-fly jeans, dancing to banda music at parties across Los Angeles.

“I’ve been shot in the chest and leg, and I’ve lost a lot of friends to gang fights,” said Castellanos, who is president of the club Orgullo Maldito. “So when I moved to Huntington Park, I didn’t want to be in anything gang-related. Instead of being out on the streets killing people, a lot of gang members are now in clubs having fun, meeting people and dancing.”

Although Vargas and others say the creation of quebradita clubs is a “great thing to happen in the (Latino) community,” they also have sparked controversy.

Police say they sometimes have to break up parties because of fights, loud music and rowdiness. Sometimes, alcohol shows up, but most clubs say they do not promote drinking and drugs.

Officials say members routinely break the law when they throw parties at homes and charge guests $2 to $10 to get in.

Despite the fact that club members wear tight jeans instead of baggy gangster-style clothes, they are frequently mistaken for gang members because they hang out in groups, flash hand signs and wear matching clothes emblazoned with their club names.

“We’re a little apprehensive about them because the clubs are not all positive,” said Raul Moreno, principal of South Gate High School. “Some of the clubs adopt bad names and have the same idiosyncrasies as gangs. Any time you get a group of kids together, it can take on positive or negative characteristics.”

But for the most part, school officials who are familiar with the clubs support them.

“The clubs don’t have the same rivalries that gangs have,” said Antonio Garcia, principal of Huntington Park High. “They seem to promote having a good time, rather than getting into trouble.”

The club phenomenon began in 1990 when 18 Huntington Park youths decided to start a fan club for the group Banda Vallarta Show. Calling themselves Te Ves Bien Buena, the youths met regularly to dance the quebradita , which combines elements of country-Western, polka, lambada and flamenco-style dancing.

Banda fans in other areas soon decided to start their own groups, using names of their favorite banda songs and performers.

“It caught on in different neighborhoods because it wasn’t possible for someone in Pasadena, for instance, to be part of a club in Huntington Park,” said Jacobo Rodriguez, director of promotions for Kora Records in Downey, which produces and promotes banda music. “So it was suggested that they form their own clubs in their own neighborhoods.”

Shortly after the clubs formed, the parties began.

At first, they were small. Members would gather in someone’s living room or back yard and spend hours dancing to the festive horns and oom-pah bass blasting from a boombox or stereo.

Bands and deejays have replaced the boomboxes, and parties are held at sites large enough to accommodate hundreds of guests.

More than 1,000 people recently crammed into a South-Central tire shop to attend a party sponsored by one of Los Angeles’ oldest and largest clubs, Casimira, which has more than 150 members. As two bands played in the smoke-filled warehouse, people rocked to the distinct banda beat.

No fights broke out and alcohol was restricted to those over 21. Only a few adults walked around with beer cans. Two security guards patrolled the area, and every person who paid the $5 admission fee was frisked at the door.

“We all get along well with the other clubs,” said Rick Ruiz, a member of the Ritmo Vaquero club, which has 75 members throughout Los Angeles County. “We don’t get into fights because we all just want to have fun.”

Members adhere to special customs and speak a language that few others understand.

For instance, there’s “baptizing.” To complete this ritual, which symbolizes solidarity between two groups, members of one club will go to a party and pour champagne on another club’s members.

While at parties, revelers also will shout their club names during breaks in the music, and gather in circles and toss one of their comrades into the air. After doing a couple of flips waving a club baseball cap, the high flier is caught in a basket of arms.

Dressed in suede charro boots, a silk shirt and a black cowboy hat, Ricardo Contreras, 18, spent most of a recent night dancing the quebradita-- which means “little break”--to banda renditions of such songs as “Proud Mary” and “Deep in the Heart of Texas.”

“I used to be a tagger and would write stuff all over the walls and on the MTA buses,” said Contreras, a Bell High graduate and member of Casimira . “I used to make fun of people who liked banda music. But then I went to one party, saw all the pretty girls, and then went out and bought myself the boots and the hat.”

Contreras said he also used to go to so-called rave parties, where alternative music is played. They are held in abandoned buildings and often involve drugs and alcohol. He stopped after he became part of the quebradita club scene.

“I got bored of the raves, and I’d rather do this because it’s not worth it getting into trouble all the time,” he said.

The roots of banda music, once considered mostly a blue-collar phenomenon, go back to brass bands brought to Mexico by the 19th-Century immigration of Germans.

In the past, many Latino youths--particularly those who were born in the United States--used to balk at banda music, dismissing it as a kind of hillbilly music. Now, young people are banda’s biggest fans.

Club members, some of whom once shunned their Mexican culture, say banda music and quebradita dancing make them feel proud of their heritage.

Former gang member Castellanos has seen how banda music and quebradita clubs turn young people around. Not only are he and his friends more culturally aware, he said, but they are avoiding deadly confrontations.

“It’s better to be out partying because at least that way you can stay alive,” said Castellanos, who strictly enforces his club’s exclusion of gang members.

Despite such precautions, the parties can lead to trouble.

“(They) sometimes attract problems because of the large numbers of people who go,” said a Los Angeles Police Department officer from the Southeast Division who requested anonymity. “There also have been fights and shootings, and sometimes people who go to the parties block the streets. Basically, they do what they want.”

It is illegal in most cities in Southern California to charge admission to a party held at a private home, or to have a party at a business unless it is properly zoned. Richard Sanchez, Los Angeles’ chief building inspector, said he did not know if any club members have been cited.

Jose Vargas, the Santa Ana police officer, said many officers are critical of club members because they are unfamiliar with the club movement.

“I’ve heard stories from some members of quebradita groups who say they were in a park wearing the hats and dancing when the police came and started taking their names down,” Vargas said. “They said they were part of a quebradita group, and the officers said, ‘What the heck is quebradita? ‘ “

Although there are hundreds of clubs, most outside the Latino community know nothing about them. When first asked about them, Huntington Park Police Chief Frank Sullivan said he was “totally unaware” of the clubs. Fifteen minutes later, he called to say that a friend had just given him a rundown on the craze.

“She told me about all the parties and all the kids that are involved,” Sullivan said. “She got all excited when she started talking about it. One of the reasons we may not know about this is because we’re always dealing with the negatives. We don’t always hear about the positive things going on.”

Quebradita clubs still are a predominantly Latino trend because its members advertise their parties solely in Spanish, through flyers and on Spanish-language KLAX-FM--which started playing banda music in August, 1992, and is L.A.’s highest-rated radio station.

KLAX, known as La Equis (The X), is credited with fueling the phenomenon by publicizing parties and allowing members to visit its Hollywood studios to make promotional announcements. Various groups have asked the station’s disc jockeys to become their padrinos or godfathers--the highest distinction in the club hierarchy.

“We promote the clubs because this is the best way to get kids out of gangs,” said disc jockey Juan Carlos Hidalgo, whose morning ratings top Howard Stern’s. “But if we don’t like the name of the club, we won’t promote it. We don’t want to support clubs who are into anything negative.”

The rage also prompted Carmen Moran to start La Quebradita, a free weekly magazine with a circulation of 50,000. The colorful tabloid, which began in July, includes articles about different clubs and membership information.

“It was my husband’s idea to start the magazine,” said Moran, who works out of a small Hollywood office. “He said this is a good way to help young people.”

As a way to counteract the negative perceptions, several clubs are participating in charitable projects, using proceeds from their parties. About a dozen clubs formed a confederation and recently threw a party to buy toys for poor children in Mexico.

After the Jan. 17 earthquake, KLAX announced that it was sponsoring a food drive. A thousand people, most of them club members, came to the station’s parking lot with donations.

Parents are also getting in on the action, encouraging their children to learn the dance, attending parties and sometimes even starting their own clubs.

Irene Hernandez and a group of other Eastside parents started El Sherif de Chocolate for their children. Although the parents dance too, most members are ages 3 to 10.

“We wanted to do this so our kids won’t be out on the streets getting into trouble,” Hernandez said. “The kids have fun dancing, and the parents like it as much as their kids.”